Ryanair crew again striking at Eindhoven airport
Ryanair cabin crew workers at Eindhoven Airport are striking for 24 hours on Tuesday. According to union FNV, they are protesting against the closure of Ryanair's base at the airport and the way they are being treated by their employer, NU.nl reports.
The striking employees will hand a petition to the provincial government of Noord-Brabant. According to FNV, the province is party to the conflict as a shareholder in the airport.
Ryanair is closing its Eindhoven base on November 5th. This means that no Ryanair staff will be stationed in Eindhoven. There will still be flights to and from Eindhoven, but these will be carried out by staff based in other countries. The airline announced this closure shortly after a previous strike.
According to FNV, cabin crew that were still in their probation period will now have no income "from one day to the next". FNV expects that "the majority" of cabin crew members scheduled to work on Tuesday will participate in the strike.
Ryanair called this an "unnecessary strike". According to the airline, no flights to or from Eindhoven will be canceled on Tuesday. The company previously used strike breakers - deploying pilots and crew from other countries to carry out flights.
"All of our Eindhoven flights are operating as normal, all of our crews reported for duty and we look forward to carrying all of our Eindhoven customers today", Ryanair said in a statement to NL Times.
Ryanair previously said that it would try to keep the number of job losses in Eindhoven to a minimum, but FNV attaches little value to this promise. "Ryanair has never been concerned about employee rights or Dutch [labor] law", Leen van List of FNV said to the newspaper. It's time for the government to intervene, he said. "It is time for Minister [Wouter] Koolmees of Social Affairs and Employment to put in black in white that employees who live and work in the Netherlands are subject ot Dutch law."
